I'll admit, when the CDC initially recommended masks in public as a first line of defense, I was a mask warrior. I felt pride in protecting those around me through the "simple" use of a mask. It felt like such an easy way to do life-- we live as usual, albeit with a little more space between us, but we both mask up and carry on as if we weren't masked at all.
Until the day we began rotating who takes our three year old to Mass, and I realized all the nonverbals involved in parenting. Giving the "mom look" with just your eyes is as ineffective as letting your children know how proud you are of them through your ears. Shifting my mask to receive our Lord while focusing on not dropping Him, never letting my child see my moving lips as I pray to our heavenly Father... suddenly, the mask didn't feel so easy.
When our school began requiring staff members' use of masks all day, I was excited. It was an opportunity to serve my students in a grand way, by keeping them in school and helping them to remain healthy. However, about a week into masking up for 8 hours a day in a job that requires you to be speaking to 1-23 students at a time, the mask started to feel constricting. Like everything I wanted to do and say was muffled. The life in me became muffled, too.
This weekend Ben, Abby, John, and I went on vacation with our friends and their kids. The minute everyone began to arrive, my body relaxed, my heart was peaceful, my soul revived. Delving in to late-night chats when our kids were asleep revealed a common thread among us: we were all just feeling tired. Life is HARD right now. Covid has sucked a lot of joy out of us all, and our jobs are starting to feel chaotic.
My friend Jaci looked at me one night as we spoke about how fruitful the weekend had been, and she said, "You can't make old friends." That comment sat with me throughout the rest of the weekend.
You can't make old friends.
You can never be understood in the way you are with those who have sat with you in the ridiculous, hilarious, messy, hard, times.
When I'm experiencing hardships, rarely do I crave to be around anyone but Jesus, my mom, and my best friends from high school and college. Why is that? I would say it's because they are the ones who know me. In the greatest sense, they are the ones who make me feel known. There's nothing to explain. I don't have to watch my words. They have seen the things that have made me, the things that have broken me, every scar, every wound, every Jack-and-Coke midnight dance move, every radical and subtle reversion to Jesus. There is nothing I have to BE when I am with them. I simply just AM.
These masks don't allow me to be known. My students don't know the look of pride I have for their accomplishments. They don't know the look I make when they're not meeting my expectations. They don't know the frustration building on my face until I say something. They don't know the small smile beneath the mask when I'm being playful. They just don't know me.
And then I head to Mass where Jesus awaits me. And I come to Him...masked. He sees through it, I recognize that, but sometimes I just want to rip it off so He can see all of me. Every wrinkle he designed, every curve in my nose. My smile. My tears. I think we got it wrong in saying that our eyes are the windows to our souls. Because when only my eyes are showing, I feel lost.
Covid has been hard on the best versions of us, and absolutely brutal on the wounded parts. But if Jesus revealed one thing to me this weekend, it's that in the midst of this pandemic, we have to include those people who make us feel known in our bubbles. We have to protect the public, even our daily interactions with others, and then we have to step back and look at what is arising within us. And if it's the need for love, that becomes priority.
Today I challenge you to reflect on the people who make you feel known. The friends, whether new or old, that make your body breathe when you see them. The ones that cause your face to relax when you didn't know you were tense. The ones who look at your "mom bod" and love every new curve that they got to witness being created. The ones who breathe life into your soul.
The people who bring Christ to you in their simple existence.
And then remember, the same Christ living in them is the same Christ living in you.
"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you. Before you were born, I set you apart."
Jeremiah 1:5
Never stop believing that you are seen, you are loved, you are known.
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